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Good Theranos article on Dark Daily
- Thread starter WEBB PINKERTON
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I won't mind seeing Quest or LabCorp go down to these guys.
Theranos is Uber as Quest is to Yellow Cab.
Theranos is Uber as Quest is to Yellow Cab.
It makes sense when people are willing to cut corners and save cost for a taxi as long as it gets you from point A to point B.
However, if your family member had a serious illness, would you be willing to sacrifice sensitivity and specificity for practicality/saving costs? If patient care is at risk, would you still try to cut cost?
If medical errors do happen due to Theranos not being adequately validated, the lawyers will grill the company on it
However, if your family member had a serious illness, would you be willing to sacrifice sensitivity and specificity for practicality/saving costs? If patient care is at risk, would you still try to cut cost?
If medical errors do happen due to Theranos not being adequately validated, the lawyers will grill the company on it
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Say what we will about CAP proficiency testing, but at least your results are measured up against all other laboratories running your instrument for that particular test. Theranos has no comparative tests because no one else runs their proprietary and super-secret assays. I'm sure someone somewhere knows how their testing stacks up against the current gold standard(s), but it ain't us. And I suspect that if it were "that" good, they would have come out and already said so with some data to back them up.
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I like how Theranos won't repond to any questions put to them by the Dark Report.
Quest and Labcorp won't be going down to these guys.
Quest and Labcorp won't be going down to these guys.
Former Senator Bill First was the key note speaker for the American College of Surgeons recently.
He spoke about how Theranos was going be the best thing to happen to lab testing since Pasteur ...
He claims he does not get any money for being on Theranos's board. Really?
He spoke about how Theranos was going be the best thing to happen to lab testing since Pasteur ...
He claims he does not get any money for being on Theranos's board. Really?
Theranos has a lot of smart money behind it. Don't count them out yet.
I'd wager they're going to displace the big giants as the CP captains. Which is good because CP is not the practice of medicine. I certainly don't give a damn about losing CP to a better alternative.
I'd wager they're going to displace the big giants as the CP captains. Which is good because CP is not the practice of medicine. I certainly don't give a damn about losing CP to a better alternative.
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It's so hard to know what the end result will be.
They are very cryptic, they dismiss legitimate concerns with cries of bias or "you just haven't seen the data."
Their board is all politicians and military types. No lab experts?
The founder makes a lot of statements with comparisons to current lab practice that are woefully incorrect (it takes a week to get test results back, you can't run reflex tests, you need one tube of blood for every test).
They make vast claims about what frequent and early lab testing can do (catch your pancreatic cancer 10 years early and be cured!), and dismiss concerns about any of this overtesting.
I suspect they are using their market value and buzz to build up a business big enough to be sustained when they have to do these public comparisons.
It certainly seems like a legitimate company with a lot to offer. To me it seems like their biggest contribution will be the "democratization" of the lab test and helping to push down costs and prices. Getting smaller samples on less invasive collection systems would definitely be beneficial for people who need frequent testing for whatever reason (diabetics, renal patients, chemo pts, etc). But there are significant questions about how this would be applied to hospitalized (sick!) patients for whom finger sticks might be less accurate.
Also, because they are proprietary they can't put their machines in hospitals yet. So for now their reach will be limited, but will likely grow. The question is how far. Will they remain a niche or will they truly revolutionize? The current business and practice patterns favor the former (albeit maybe a large niche) but the jury is obviously still out.
It is definitely good to see the media focusing more critically on it. The financial bloggers and sites are starting to put more scruitiny into it, which is definitely a welcome change from the previous months of articles basically saying, "This 30 year old woman is a billionaire" "This tech billionaire is just like steve jobs, but a woman!" "This self made billionaire is going to upend the lab business!" If they really admired her they would focus less on her appearance and her bank account.
They are very cryptic, they dismiss legitimate concerns with cries of bias or "you just haven't seen the data."
Their board is all politicians and military types. No lab experts?
The founder makes a lot of statements with comparisons to current lab practice that are woefully incorrect (it takes a week to get test results back, you can't run reflex tests, you need one tube of blood for every test).
They make vast claims about what frequent and early lab testing can do (catch your pancreatic cancer 10 years early and be cured!), and dismiss concerns about any of this overtesting.
I suspect they are using their market value and buzz to build up a business big enough to be sustained when they have to do these public comparisons.
It certainly seems like a legitimate company with a lot to offer. To me it seems like their biggest contribution will be the "democratization" of the lab test and helping to push down costs and prices. Getting smaller samples on less invasive collection systems would definitely be beneficial for people who need frequent testing for whatever reason (diabetics, renal patients, chemo pts, etc). But there are significant questions about how this would be applied to hospitalized (sick!) patients for whom finger sticks might be less accurate.
Also, because they are proprietary they can't put their machines in hospitals yet. So for now their reach will be limited, but will likely grow. The question is how far. Will they remain a niche or will they truly revolutionize? The current business and practice patterns favor the former (albeit maybe a large niche) but the jury is obviously still out.
It is definitely good to see the media focusing more critically on it. The financial bloggers and sites are starting to put more scruitiny into it, which is definitely a welcome change from the previous months of articles basically saying, "This 30 year old woman is a billionaire" "This tech billionaire is just like steve jobs, but a woman!" "This self made billionaire is going to upend the lab business!" If they really admired her they would focus less on her appearance and her bank account.
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